Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre

Our Centre sets out to link the leading academic clinicians in the UK with leading scientists in subjects such as engineering, biology and material science. We will use this expertise to deliver new treatments for osteoarthritis at an early stage in the disease. Why is this research important? Osteoarthritis is a disabling joint disease which mainly affects older people. Cartilage, which normally allows pain free movement of the joints, becomes degraded leading to pain and disability. Patients can have difficulty walking and sleeping due to the pain. In advanced osteoarthritis the damage caused by the disease can lead to a need for joints to be replaced with artificial ones. Large numbers of the population suffer from this disease resulting in a major cost for the NHS. The options for treatments are currently limited and focus mainly on relieving symptoms using pain-killers and physiotherapy. In advanced disease the only surgical procedure recommended is joint replacement. However this involves major surgery and artificial joints rarely restore a full range of movement. There is also an added risk of the joint failing over time. Lifestyle changes are also posing new challenges and often artificial joints are not satisfactory for those individuals who wish to lead an active life. We will focus on the repair and regeneration of cartilage and bone to prevent or ease symptoms in patients with early osteoarthritis. We will use less invasive key-hole surgery to repair and regenerate the patient's own joint. This could take place at an earlier stage of the disease and would delay or replace the need for joint replacement. We also want to find out if we can combine this approach with the use of stem cells (cells that have the potential to develop into many different cell types) to enhance treatments for osteoarthritis. How will the findings benefit patients? We will decrease the costs of tissue engineering approaches and increase both their effectiveness and robustness. Small groups of patients will actually receive these new treatments. By researching these patients we can use this information to translate our science from the laboratory to the clinic and develop a number of other cell based therapies for several joint tissues. Ultimately we aim to make these therapies available to all patients without the need for specialist centres